


Prism

by ZoeBug



Series: Cutting Shapes (and Side Pieces) [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Drabble, Falling In Love, Introspection, M/M, POV Marco Bott, Side Pieces: Cutting Shapes, Takes place during Chapter 8 of CS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 05:52:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4865459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBug/pseuds/ZoeBug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have always been drawn to beautiful things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prism

**Author's Note:**

> Finally posting this to AO3 ha :')
> 
> A companion piece for my fic ["Cutting Shapes"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1853821) from Marco's POV. Takes place around chapter 8-ish.

* * *

 

(A while ago I recorded this drabble as a vocal warmup and thought I'd toss it up here in case people might want to listen to it so *shrug emoji*)

 **Listen to me reading "Prism" aloud** : [DOWNLOAD HERE](http://www.mediafire.com/file/sd9hvpg0i2f4z8a/Prism_-_A_CS_Side.mp3)

* * *

 

I have always been drawn to beautiful things.

But I guess, to me, beauty has a different meaning than for a lot of people. Beautiful is less of a description for me as it is a feeling, a reactionary response to the object of its causation.

I feel beautiful things like inhaling so deeply your lungs start to ache. I feel beautiful things like the wheezing childhood laughter when a sibling sits on your chest and tickles you. I feel beautiful things like slipping into a steaming shower with frozen feet that begin to prickle from the heat.

And the things I think are beautiful, I’ve come to find, seem a bit unorthodox to most. In my opinion, people use the words "beautiful” and “pretty” like synonyms when they aren’t. Pretty things can be beautiful and beautiful things can be pretty but they are not interchangeable. 

And I think part of the reason that beauty feels like it does to me is because of my attitude toward it. Truly beautiful things have never been just pretty. Beautiful things are comforting, but they are never entirely comfortable. Pretty things are delicately so. Fragile. Many things I find beautiful are very, very strong. And while I don’t find “pretty” to have a particularly strong connection to the concept of “beautiful,” the line between “beautiful” and “complex” is as bold and clear as anything I’ve ever known. 

I think that’s why I simply told Jean the first time we talked that I look for potential in things. Optimism is an easier concept to grasp, easier to communicate. Complexity… is complex. Telling someone how you appreciate it, even more-so.

It was easier than telling him all the ways he’d moved like he was made of water with sunlight passing through that wouldn’t let my eyes leave him. It was easier than telling him that the way he looked up at me had made my heart seize in my chest. 

And it was entirely easier than telling him that the fidgeting tension with which he carried himself afterward in the lobby was what really tugged that knot tight. Because there was more than one something between us in that moment.

There was a thicket of thorny vines behind his eyes at first I wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted there or not. Whether it was protecting him or trapping him.

I could almost see him behind it, clutching garden shears with trembling hands scarred from too many attempts, peering through the thick growth toward the other side.

Oh, how I’d wanted to reach through and take his hand, run my thumb soothingly over the nicks on his knuckles, tell him that sometimes people just have bushes full of thorns behind their eyes and that’s okay.

Because the more I thought about Jean, about his openness when his head was full of music, about the tangle of thorns between himself and the rest of the world, the more I couldn’t stop. I watched him, considered him, the way he walked around certain things, the way his shoulders hunched, the way he would go quiet for long stretches and his eyes would go distant but sharp. It was as if he was thinking through a millennium’s worth of ideas that I was not privy to and at a speed I could not possibly hope to keep up with. 

There are _worlds_ behind his eyes, behind that growth that I came to realize Jean hated when it made his words come out stuttered and halted and mangled. I could imagine him during those times, thrusting his hand through, reaching for me, imagine the way the thorns would rip at his skin and bare his bleeding wounds to the open air on the other side. I could see how he would retract his wounded limbs afterwards in a quiet, hunched averting of eyes and curl of the shoulders and every time it nearly broke my heart.

When I find something beautiful, it means there is, without a doubt, a part of it that is a bit uncomfortable―part of it that makes your lungs ache or feels like a weight on your ribs or pinpricks dancing along your skin.

I’m not saying that suffering is beautiful. I have done my fair share enough to know there is no glamour or soulfulness to having hostile things growing in your mind where others have open, packed roads.

It sucks. And you try to rationalize with yourself, say “this is just what grows here” try to accept it as part of the landscape, try to pick your way through slowly enough that you come through with the least amount of bruising and bleeding you can manage. But no amount you learn or strength you gain through that can make that kind of unfairness anything close to beautiful.

Jean’s suffering does not make him beautiful. He is not beautiful because of it or in spite of it. The reason I find that part beautiful as well as the rest was because it speaks to me, tells me “I know what it feels like,” shows me that even if I showed him my own scars, evidence of my own battle through a patch of thorns, there is in him, for that piece of me, only solidarity and compassion.

There is a type of kindness that only people who have known suffering carry with them, and it is the sort that Jean has.

Jean is beautiful to me because of the way he looks upwards to the sky silently and I can see it passing in his eyes, see the way he gets lost in his own head and it makes me want to know what beautiful things he sees up there that I cannot. 

Jean is beautiful to me because when he listens to music I can see every beat and note and pause pass through him like ripples through water.

I have always found complex things to be beautiful, and have also found that things with that many pieces always have one or two that are a bit jagged and still loved them all the same. 

And Jean… Jean is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

I have always considered the world to be a startlingly beautiful place. Even when my own wall of thorns rose above me and blocked out its light from me. Sometimes I still have to tiptoe around them, trimmed and kept, as they slowly and lazily snake across the ground.

And I have always been the one exception to my own rule. My black mark, my broken shard, my own patch of hostile growth was something I could never accept. I could neither detach nor include that piece because both methods have left me feeling hollow and heavy and weary. 

Years later and I still am not quite sure how to look at myself like I do everything else. 

But when Jean looks at me―Jean, who I find so beautiful and intricate, who I have a sneaking suspicion can feel what “beautiful” means deeper in his soul than I could ever imagine―and his eyes get distant and sharp like they do when he looks up to the sky or when he hears music… I can almost see it too.

The world passes like light into Jean as if he is water. He takes it in, slows it down, quiets it within him, bends it and refracts it. Jean picks apart the spectrum of colors that come to him as a tangle of white and when they finally leave him again you can see each distinct one clearly, can see all the beautiful shades of something he has considered worthy enough to let shine through him.

I’d never thought I was beautiful before Jean looked at me. Pretty, maybe. But not beautiful. Not in the way I think it matters. 

But when Jean looks at me like that, like I am the morning sky, listens to me speak like my thoughts are some beautifully crafted piece of music… I can almost see it―can almost see how I look after he has picked me apart inside his mind, gently teased apart the pieces of me with nimble fingers and spread me out in a beautiful fan of colored light when he passes it back out again like an exhale.

I’ve always been drawn to beautiful things.

But Jean is something else entirely. Jean is something beautiful that can then also show you beauty in places you couldn’t find it in before.

I’d never known how confident I could feel until I heard his voice form the words “ _you play really well._ ” I’d never known how warm Apollo’s heat lamp really was until I’d stood beside it with him. I’d never known how bright the landing outside my doorway was until I saw him standing on it. I’d never known how fast an apartment could start to feel like home until I wasn’t there alone.

And I’d never known how good a person I wanted to be until I’d heard him whisper to himself while curled up in my bed.

I’ve always found the world to be a beautiful place. 

But, _God_ , it’s nothing compared to what I see when I look at it through Jean.

**Author's Note:**

> [fanfic/podfic blog](http://zoe-bug.tumblr.com/) | [personal](http://xiexiecaptain.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/xiexiecaptain)


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